Chris Hemsworth's boxer-inspired role

A 2009 action-drama starring Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard. Shawn MacArthur (Tatum) is selling books off a blanket in midtown Manhattan when a few guys try to rob him. He beats them up, and this prompts their boss (Howard) to seek him out for underground knuckle fighting.

The actor - who plays the lead character in the forthcoming movie - admits he struggled to get to grips with the hammer used as a weapon by his Norse warrior God on-screen alter ego and sought inspiration on his fighting technique by studying boxing.

He said: "It really is a very impractical kind of weapon in a sense. There's a big huge head on it and a tiny little handle. So we talked about boxing a lot actually. I'd done a lot of Muay Thai for years and Muay Thai is much more on your toes and legs involved.

"Boxing is more of a grounded sort of technique. We'd talk about Mike Tyson, low to the ground and power through the legs. A lot of that I think influenced Thor and certainly big open shoulders, big shoulder movements. It becomes a very gritty kind of street fighting stuff at times and happens to have a big old hammer in his hand as well."

As well as struggling to get to grips with the hammer, Chris admits he also had problems with pretending to fall through space because the motion made him feel ill.

He explained to About.com: "There's something I thought I could do and I couldn't which was strapped into this harness, I had to pretend like I was falling through space. I basically was there on a couple of wires and they just spin you.

"I thought that's something that at the show grounds you pay five bucks for and it's just going to be fun. Two spins later, I was like, 'Whooooaaaaa.' We stopped and I was pale. They're like, 'You want to stop?' I was like, 'No, just keep going until I throw up.'

"Eventually we got what we needed and I just had to sit down for a couple hours. It was hideous."